The Garden

We celebrate a lot of great experiences in this world...not because they are easy, but because they are valuable and timely.

One such celebration is our gardens. 

The first vegetable garden I remember in Salt Lake City was in a borrowed lot and a fair walk from our home. I was just a small child in those days. Though the work was difficult and the watering usually took place during the middle of the night, I remember the experience with fondness. 

Our garden in Castle Valley was of an entirely different variety. It was large and ever more the challenge, but it gave us life and love and work...three components of a fulfilling existence. I remember the corn and the tomatoes, the lettuce and peas, beets, swiss chard, potatoes and melons. And we can't forget the berries, grapes, and fruit trees. These, too, came from our expanded gardens. Flowers surrounded our home and filled it with sweet fragrance.

Each winter we would prepare by planning what we would sow in the Spring. Mother and Dad went through the Burpee and Harris seed catalogs and Stark tree and fruit inventory to enhance our little farm and provide for the family. We all excitedly helped with fond anticipation. And despite obstacles, the seeds planted then bore fruit amid the challenges and hardships of life.

And now we recall those memories and prepare our homes and families for a harvest the likes of which we have never known. The abundance of benefits that came from the experience in our gardens far exceeds the purpose at the time for which they were grown. Today our family reaps blessings of hope, confidence and peace due in part to the instruction of parents who were not just raising a harvest of fruit, vegetables, and flowers that ultimately came from our gardens. They were also rearing a family.

The fount of all our blessings started long before that time, however, on the dusty roads of Jerusalem, even atop the Mount of Olives, amid the Sea of Galilee, and ultimately in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Yes. Gardens miraculously yield an eternal crop of blessings. Now our gardens have produced family ties, home, and joy--blooming now and forever beyond our fondest dreams. We are truly the product of the grace of a Gardner on high.

Gratefully, the Hand of God is daily working miracles in the gardens of our lives.